FOUR PHASES OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT

We have learnt what is project management. There are four phases of project management which are required to manage projects efficiently on quality, time and costs.

1. Defining and organizing the project: Defining project is the first step in the project management process. In this process you identify the business need for and objectives of the project; clarify competing demands and watch for scope creep. Organizing projects means defining roles and responsibilities, create a project charter, and develop high-level time and cost estimates. Organizing of the project is an important step towards planning of the project.

2. Planning the project: Planning phase of the project management is done based on organization done in the previous step. In this phase you assemble your team and assign tasks to individuals, develop a budget for the project, develop a schedule and create a communications plan. While doing planning for the project, effective and clear estimate of the time and costs are done. If any changes needs to be done in the planning for more clear estimates of time and costs, sometimes organization of the project is reviewed.

3. Executing the project: In this phase of the project, team is ready to launch the project. Team members monitor and control progress in terms of cost, time, and quality; and manage risk. It is kept in the mind that during the execution of the project, it is required to keep the process monitored for timely completion of the project, as per schedules. If the project work is not carried out as per schedules, and execution is well behind the schedule, then cost and quality of the project will be effected. If the time of the project is increased, it increases the cost of manpower and their allowances affecting the budget set for the project. Meanwhile, if the project is still required to be completed on time, then the quality of the project is effected. Always remember, Quality = Time + Cost. If cost or time is effected, quality of the project is effected.

4. Closing down the project: Once the execution of the project is completed, the project team evaluates the team’s performance, documents related to the project are achieved, lessons learned form the experiences in the project is captured and celebrate the project’s completion.

In other project management standards, these phases are described as project management process groups and they are grouped into five categories namely; Initiating process group, Planning process group, Excuting process group, monitoring and controlling group and Closing process group.